New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

cskendrick - 01:17pm Oct 12, 2001 EST (#10218 of 10250)
No vaccination without representation

ledzeppelin 10/12/01 12:19pm

Actually Mazza9 talked me down, at least a little bit. It appears there have been booster technologies available since the 1960s that can duplicate what I feared the NMS was capable of, though they do not have the range of the latter.

I think the chief danger lies in deploying a system that so far has not shown a very impressive track record. If I were a rival nuclear power, I'd feign fear and dismay over the US working on such a system, and just laugh to myself as I watched the Americans pour hundreds of billions of dollars down a hole.

Once a viable NMD exists, now, that's a whole different story.

mazza9 - 05:20pm Oct 12, 2001 EST (#10219 of 10250)
Louis Mazza

CSkendrick

I Still don't get it. Why do you say that the NMD is an offensive weapon system? If I were the President and I wanted to launch first I would execute the SIOP and every B52, B1, B2, Minuteman and Triton would be launched towards their targets. The world would end in a nuclear winter and the Global Warming forum would be moot. To say that a defensive system is a first strike enabler is far fetched.

The WTC attack was a first strike and Al Quida didn't need a defensive system to enable it. God forbid that they had laid a 20K (Hiroshima sized weapon) at the base of the Twin Towers. Imedeiate death and destruction would be well into the $trillions of property damage and millions of deaths. A $250 Billion investment against a nuked LA, NY, Chi, Dal, Mia etc is a good piece of insurance.

LouMazza

cskendrick - 06:18pm Oct 12, 2001 EST (#10220 of 10250)
No vaccination without representation

mazza9 10/12/01 5:20pm

Here's one for you. I am rogue nuclear power. I can either build 10 weaponed ICBM's for about $1 billion, 50 dummy ICBM's for the same price, or any algebraic combination in between. I will place small unshielded payloads of non-fissile uranium in the dummy warheads to thwart your sensors.

You have a system that can stop 1 out 3 rockets. You have 30 interceptors, which means you will most likely stop 5-15 of them. I think these are very generous assumptions for the defense based on the test results.

For the price of $1 billion, my attack will consist of 30 dummy rockets and 4 real ones. I figure I have good odds of hitting 3 targets. I have very good odds of hitting twice.

And just to keep things honest, I will fill the "dummies" with your favorite neuro- or biotoxin, just for kicks.

Granted, the system as-is makes missile attack by a private organization prohibitive. But with very little money I can overwhelm it. With even less money (by driving or using a cruise missile, if need be) I can get around the defense entirely.

mazza9 - 12:04am Oct 13, 2001 EST (#10221 of 10250)
Louis Mazza

You've just described Korea, China, Iran, and possibly Iraq. Given our sensors we should be able to withstand this attack, absorb 50 million dead, 100 Trillion in damage and destroy these countries completely. I mean Trinity Glassworks! But, are you ready to accept these casualties?

When I was in the Air Force, I learned that there was much sharing of technology to insure that there were no Oops launches. I was told that the first generation blast door initiators at the Minot AFB Minuteman missile field that was built in the middle 60s could be "triggered" by those new fangled garage door openers that began to hit the market at that time. We let the Russians know so that they would be aware of the problem when designing their safety devices.

MAD required this Cold War respect, kinda like that shown by Tony Soprano and his friends. It wasthis cooperation kept us from an accidental Armegeddon! When you are dealing with 10th Century despots can you deal from this rational base? Nope.

A while back there was an article in Scientific American about a new rocket engine that was about the size of a postage stamp. It could be manufactured using the same techniques that we use to manufacture integrated circuits. This small engine , it was predicted, could be clustered to power a rocket about 8' long. This rocket would allow same day FEDEX deliveries from NY to Tokyo in under an hour. Might thousands of these small rockets be employed at a small expense to provide NMD capability. A small computer in that rocket would have the power to find and destroy an incoming warhead. Or if stationed on orbit might it be the launch phase interceptor to protect our shores.

LouMazza

cskendrick - 11:05am Oct 13, 2001 EST (#10222 of 10250)
No vaccination without representation

mazza9 10/13/01 12:04am

Now you're talking my language: A super-AEGIS system for continental defense. Lots of redundancy, relatively simple and cheap ammo. You could incorporate some sort of homing beacon in the rockets so that if one makes a hit but does not destroy its target, it can "tag" the incoming so that it is easier for subsequent interceptors to lock onto and destroy.

That's an idea I have shamelessly lifted from the movie "The Fifth Element".

And the beauty of such a system is that it could be scaled up by modifying existing systems.

As for eventual deployment: how about aerostats? These would be floating semi-stationary platforms, basically fortified dirigibles in the stratosphere, with launcher turrets situated at the poles and along the equator of a spherical housing (in which would be the super-heated gases that would keep the whole thing in the sky).

LOE networks are expensive even with GPS satellites, and the mass-lift requirements for an orbital defense system would make such an adventure quite costly. Then there's the sultry politics of weaponizing space and having scores of American "Death Stars" rolling overhead every hour of the day. Maybe later, though.

mazza9 - 11:28am Oct 13, 2001 EST (#10223 of 10250)
Louis Mazza

I like the aerostat idea. NASA has been testing the solar powered flying wing that can "loiter at 100,000 feet for days. I believe that it recently achieved this operational spec. At that altitude it could provide a long range surveillance capability for identifying cruise missile threats as well as SLBM. OTH Radar has been updated and can fill in the gaps.

At one point, in the ealy 70s, Boeing was looking for 747 sales and their proposal to the Air Force was to make a 747 a cruise missile carrier. Where a B-52 could carry 18 such missiles, the 747 could carry more than 50. Now imagine a 747 carrying hundreds of these micro rockets as an adjunct to the Laser equipped 747. Defense in depth and affordable to boot.

LouMazza

(27 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense